scholarly journals The use of radioactive substances in medicine — history and development prospects

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (6) ◽  
pp. 59-67
Author(s):  
M. S. Sheremeta ◽  
A. A. Trukhin ◽  
M. O. Korchagina

Nuclear medicine (NM) is a medical specialty that uses radionuclides (radioactive tracers) and ionising radiation for diagnostic and therapeutic (theranostic) purposes. Nuclear medicine arose and developed at the intersection of physics, chemistry and clinical medicine. The radiation emitted by radioisotopes can consist of gamma-, beta- and alpha emission, or it’s combination. Radioisotope of choice for medical purposes should have futher requirements: low radiotoxicity, suitable type of radiation, energy and half-life (several minutes to several hours and days), and also convenient detection of gamma ray radiation. The radionuclide is part of radiopharmaceutical (RP) and acts as its indicator. RP accumulates in morphological structures, becomes a carrier of coordinated information from patient to gamma camera or other equipment and reflects the dynamics of processes occurring in the examined organ. In 2021 NM celebrates its 80th anniversary. The trajectory of NM combines modern methods of radiotheranostics and applied genomic and post-genomic technologies.

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (11) ◽  
pp. 1701-1709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark F. Smith ◽  
Ronald J. Jaszczak
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 242 ◽  
pp. 01002
Author(s):  
Adam Hecht ◽  
Phoenix Baldez ◽  
Baldez Baldez

The University of New Mexico Fission Spectrometer was developed to measure fission product yield, as part of the LANL SPIDER collaboration. The spectrometer operates as an E-v detector to extract product mass event-by-event, with a time of flight region followed by an ionization chamber for kinetic energy measurements. By using the ionization chamber as a singlecathode/single-anode time projection chamber, stopping power and thus Z information is extracted, for coupled A and Z measurements. New work is being performed to add gamma ray detectors in the data stream, placed near the target region for prompt gammas and near the ionization chamber for quasiprompt (>50 ns) and later gammas, correlated with individual fission products. A stand-alone parallel plate ionization chamber (PPIC) is also being developed for fission tagging gamma ray data. The PPIC will also allow discrimination between charged particle out events and (n,n’γ), and discriminate between alpha emission and fission. Using layers in the PPIC, other targets can be measured simultaneously with a calibration target, giving relative fission cross sections. Past measurements with the spectrometer were performed at LANSCE and we plan to continue measurements there. The current work is supported by the NNSA Stewardship Science Academic Alliance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Beena Ullala Mata B N ◽  
Anup Kumar Pal ◽  
Hrithik Sivadasan ◽  
Himanshu Mishra

Nuclear Medicine is a medical specialty that allows modern diagnostics and treatments using radiopharmaceuticals original radiotracers (drugs linked to a radioactive isotope). The radiopharmaceuticals are considered a special group of drugs and thus their preparation and use are regulated by a set of policies that have been adopted by individual member countries. The radiopharmaceuticals used in diagnostic examinations are administered in very small doses. So, in general, they have no pharmacological action, side effects or serious adverse reactions. The most serious issue with their use is the potential for diagnostic mistakes due to changes in their biodistribution. The appearance and development of new radiopharmaceuticals in both the diagnostic and therapeutic domains, as well as the impact of new multimodality imaging techniques, are all having a significant impact on nuclear medicine (SPECT-CT, PET-CT, PET-MRI, etc.). It is crucial to understand the techniques limitations, radiopharmaceutical distribution and potential physiological changes, radiological contrast contraindications and bad responses, and the possibility of both interfering. The process of generating radiopharmaceuticals is introduced and relevant interactions of radiation with matter are discussed. Diagnostic nuclear medicine instrumentation is explained, and future trends in nuclear medicine imaging technology are forecasted.


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (S291) ◽  
pp. 474-476
Author(s):  
Guojun Qiao ◽  
Xionwei Liu ◽  
Renxin Xu ◽  
Yuanjie Du ◽  
Jinlin Han ◽  
...  

AbstractThe concept of a “magnetar” was proposed mainly because of two factors. First, the X-ray luminosity of Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs) and Soft Gamma-Ray Repeaters (SGRs) is larger than the rotational energy loss rate (Lx > Ėrot), and second, the magnetic field strength calculated from “normal method” is super strong. It is proposed that the radiation energy of magnetar comes from its magnetic fields. Here it is argued that the magnetic field strength calculated through the normal method is incorrect at the situation Lx > Ėrot, because the wind braking is not taken into account. Besides, the “anti-magnetar” and some other X-ray and radio observations are difficult to understand with a magnetar model.Instead of the magnetar, we propose a “quarctar”, which is a crusted quark star in an accretion disk, to explain the observations. In this model, the persistent X-ray emission, burst luminosity, spectrum of AXPs and SGRs can be understood naturally. The radio-emitting AXPs, which are challenging the magnetar, can also be explained by the quarctar model.


2009 ◽  
Vol 02 (01) ◽  
pp. 17-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Ruth

Medical applications represent the vast majority of the uses for radiotracers. This review addresses how accelerators are employed for the production of high purity radionuclides that are used in basic biomedical research, as well as for clinical medicine both for diagnosing disease and for treatment.


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